Monday, March 18, 2013

Germany!

I love German book fairs.

Every single one I've been to has been PACKED, and while that does tend to slow things down as you're trying to walk from one gigantic hall to the other, you really don't mind all that much. All these people crammed in around you are book-lovers, for god's sake. How annoyed can you actually be?

Over the weekend, I was at TWO German book fairs. The first one was in Cologne, on Friday evening, and I was up on stage with Rainer, the actor who does the German audiobooks, and Margarete, the translator. We've been doing this together for a few years now, so we're all quite comfortable with the process. The main difference between events in Germany and events everywhere else (apart from the need for a translator) is the emphasis put on the audio book. Rainer is as integral to the show as I am, and his readings make up half of our time on stage. The event in Cologne went wonderfully, and we had a really receptive audience, and I even spotted some familiar faces in the queue.

Once I'd finished signing, we went back to our hotel, where we had a very nice meal attended by the weirdest waiters I've ever encountered. One was tall, one was short, and they looked so alike that I started to suspect that they were the rejects from a batch of clones some mad professor had concocted in a dark and dingy lab. They were both wearing ill-fitting suits, both had the same type of glasses, and they both stood around and stared into space in the corners of the room while we were waiting to place our orders. So incredibly ODD.

Thankfully, we managed to escape the restaurant before they could kill us and harvest our organs to replace their own failing ones, and I got to my room and got into bed and put my head on the most deadly pillow the world has ever known. It was so big and so soft that when I put my head onto it, the whole thing folded up on either side and tried to suffocate me.

Convinced that the clone waiters were hovering outside my door, waiting for me to die, I slept without a pillow that night. I also slept sideways, because the double bed I'd been given was, in actual fact, two single beds pushed together, and I kept slipping down between them. Who knows what was waiting for me if I had slipped all the way? Scorpions? Tarantulas? Really lazy ninjas? Or maybe just a hole in the floor and a twisting slide that would deliver me to the mad professor's Experimentation Table of Doom?

I survived the night. Barely.

The next morning, we got a train to Frankfurt and then a plane to Leipzig. No attempts on my life were made during this time.

Leipzig Book Fair is half book festival and half comic convention. There are all these people dressed as Manga characters roaming around, chatting on their phones, browsing book shelves. Also, all of Germany had had a pretty bad winter, and there was piles of snow everywhere and it was pretty damn cold— and in the middle of it all you have these really cute German girls walking around in bizarre costumes that don't really cover a whole lot. They must have been FREEZING.

We did our first event, and although we only had a half an hour, it went very well. Such a huge crowd. The signing went on forever, and it was so cool seeing that many people wanting me to scrawl my signature over whatever they had.

The moment we were finished there we got in a car and drove to a graveyard. Because that's what you do once night falls, obviously.

We went to a huge sarcophagus-type place and we yapped in front of 200 people, doing our best to ignore the deep hole behind us with the old coffin. So just an average Saturday night, then...

Once that was done with, we went to dinner with a bunch of other people, including American author Maggie Stiefvater, and I sat at a big table with a bunch of people speaking German all around me. Best night EVER! Well, not quite. But Maggie is a funny lady.

Then I got back to my hotel. This time, my bed was a proper double bed, but the waiters had obviously followed me from Cologne because those damn pillows tried to drown my head again.

Sunday was my last day there. It was also Saint Patrick's Day.

(That's St PADDY'S Day, in its shortened version. Not St PATTY'S Day, as some Americans insist on calling it...)

I had an interview to do in the morning, and then I had two hours off before my event, so I went wandering through the halls. It was all so incredibly strange, and wonderfully so. It made me wish that Irish book festivals were like this. Imagine if The Mountains to the Sea festival had hundreds of teenagers walking around dressed as characters from comics and books. That would ROCK.

We did our event, signed for an enormous amount of people, and then I was whisked off to the airport to catch my first flight. I arrived back to my front door a little under eight hours later, tired but happy to be home, and looking forward to spending a night with my head on a pillow that doesn't try to kill me.

Hey! How are you?I was at your appearance in Leipzig on Saturday too.You was hilarious.And even my sister liked it, althoughshe had not read a single book.(After that, she said to me, she wants to read it soon, because it wasso genious)It was so exciting! That was the top of my day there!Thanks!

Yeah, Germans are odd. And ALL of our pillows try to kill intelligent people. Hope, sometimes my books also are on a book fair, or at last in a dusty bookshelf in the house of my dying stalker. THAT would be nice

HEY DEREK!*hugs*I am so glad you had fun and escaped those two vile waiters and the pillows of DEATH!Next time you travel, be sure to bring your own pillow just in case those evil waiters turn up again with their death pillow! We minions need you alive and well!:D

Derek fired me from Grand Mage so I asked to be an Elder he said I may be an Elder but he might kill me off so i agreed then I asked if I was definetly in LSODM he said yes then i asked on Twitter if I was an Elder and he said yes

I#ve been in Leipzig on saturday! It was awesome!! I just LOVE my T-Shirt with your autograph *.*. Just bad that we couldn't hear that much at the first reading -.-. this stupid neighbours were too loud!! (hope, you understand what i try to say... My english isn't the best, i know :-/ )

oh man you make Germany sound a bit creepy. murderous pillows.weird waiters.But i had so much fun, espcially at the cemetery. although it felt kind of wrong to laught out loud in a place like this. But it was still awesome!Do you remember that out of those 200 people there were only 3 that watch Doctor who!( or i saw just 3 and two of them were me and my sister).

And I am never going to forget that you said 'we are practically friends' in front of all those people AND fist bumped me at the saturdays book signing because you recognised me from twitter. Thank you for that! It was gorgeous!! YOU ARE GORGEOUS

I don't know Spanish, at all.But I'm not too bad with German. :3Germany's a nice place, to my own experience. A part of me regrets not joining the German Exchange.Granted, my experiences with restaurants and pillows there weren't brilliant, but Derek's easily top mine. :P

Happy Paddy's day Derek! I hope you celebrated as I did - with a congratulations cake given to your uncle with congrats on getting his PhD that was meant to be a Swiss roll that you baked but that you couldn't roll and so turned into a Flat Cake, a term courtesy of your uncle. And, of course, your mother told everyone the amazing Flat Cake of chocolate sponge filled with raspberry coulis of your own making and whipped cream was MEANT to be rolled into a traditional Swiss shape. And embarrassed you in front of all of your family. Plus, the cake was decorated with a shamrock made out of green M&Ms. Epic. I'm a mind reader, you say? Nah, just awesome.

Wait, whoa, there was a new post this whole time??? [Facepalm] I really should've guessed! I thought it was weird that I didn't see Ieni or Lucy, but Ieni emailed and Luce said Blogland was quiet on Twitter... [Facepasta] Well aloha hi, I'm here now. Not for long though, dinner break! Busy day in Fabi's world.

They should be longggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg

Frogs. I can hear frogs. Also, I can't hear rain. It's odd. And I can see the stars... It's usually cloudy/rainy every time there are auroras or a lunar eclipse. The Solstice Eclipse, even! Also, Aurora Borealis twice! I saw them the third time, though, before I fell asleep... They were very faint and they didn't dance across the sky like they would in Norway. They more sort of...shifted. Then they turned pinky-purple. I almost thought it was some sort of weird belated and strangely mesmerizing sunset, but a quick Internet search the next morning told me that it was them. It had been on the northern horizon, and the auroras had changed to pink, so it was definitely them. It was only partly cloudy that night. [laughs]

I was just thinking about how there was supposed to be a comet visible a few weeks ago, but it was cloudy. There's nothing interesting in the stars tonight. [Creepy fortune-teller voice] When Mars and Venus are aligned, you will have to face your darker soul-half.

If any of you see me tomorrow morning, could you please remind me to make a lotus for Quinnie? I'll probably remember, since I asked someone to remind me, but I really would appreciate it if you'd remind me anyway, anybody. :-)

I've owed her an origami lotus for almost a month now, but I keep forgetting.

And goodnight!

Death, I am emailing you, or composing the email anyway. Glad to know you're feeling better, the other parts not so much. [hugs] I'm so sorry about your uncle...

Derek.I too have clones hunting me.*nods sincerely*My pillow choked me last night and then my cousin turned up at 9 at night!And I have a really weird reoccurring nightmare that could be true.Every night Nye comes and stands over my bed and experiments on me.And wipes my memory of it....IT COULD BE TRUE!And the dreams are my subconscious trying to alert me.......I AM NOT EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE!WHY DO ALL MY FRIENDS SAY THAT?*glares at Vienna*OH Miss Cain!*tacklehugs Miss Cain*

*facepalm*You're not there.Right...Hmm? Dinners ready? Right gotta go!Mum: What are you talking about? Dinner isn't going to be ready for another half hour!Me: Mum! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! RUN!*sprints off*